With Acute Sinusitis, Antibiotics Score Worse Than The Placebo

April 22, 2001|By New York Times News Service.

Doctors often prescribe antibiotics for children who have acute sinusitis, but a new study suggests that the drugs do not help most of them.

Writing in the current issue of Pediatrics, the researchers said that in most cases, the children got better on their own within three weeks. So doctors should hold off giving antibiotics, said one of the authors, Dr. Jane Garbutt, an instructor at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

It is not just a question of sparing a child unneeded medication and the potential for side effects. Health experts have long been worried that excessive prescription of antibiotics is contributing to the development of drug-resistant bacteria.

The study involved 180 pediatric patients whose cold symptoms persisted for 10 to 28 days. Those found to have acute sinusitis were assigned to three groups, two given antibiotics, the third a placebo.

The researchers then kept track of the patients for two months to see how symptoms progressed and to ask about side effects. About 80 percent of the patients given antibiotics improved after 14 days. But the figure was the same for the patients given the placebo, and those given the placebo were much less likely to report side effects like nausea and diarrhea.

The researchers said that even if drugs were not necessarily helpful for sinusitis, it was still important for children to be taken to pediatricians to rule out other illnesses.